Pulitzer Prize-winning author and "one of our most talented
biographers and historians" (The New York Times) David Maraniss
delivers a "thoughtful, poignant, and historically valuable story of the
Red Scare of the 1950s" (The Wall Street Journal) through the chilling
yet affirming story of his family's ordeal, from blacklisting to
vindication.
Elliott Maraniss, David's father, a WWII veteran who had commanded an
all-black company in the Pacific, was spied on by the FBI, named as a
communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American
Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and
blacklisted for five years. Yet he never lost faith in America and
emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact.
In a sweeping drama that moves from the Depression and Spanish Civil War
to the HUAC hearings and end of the McCarthy era, Maraniss weaves his
father's story through the lives of his inquisitors and defenders as
they struggle with the vital 20th-century issues of race, fascism,
communism, and first amendment freedoms. "Remarkably balanced,
forthright, and unwavering in its search for the truth" (The New York
Times), A Good American Family evokes the political dysfunctions of
the 1950s while underscoring what it really means to be an American. It
is "clear-eyed and empathetic" (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
tribute from a brilliant writer to his father and the family he
protected in dangerous times.
